


The Legend of Adora

by orphan_account



Category: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Genre: AU, Adventure, Airbender!Glimmer, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Avatar & Benders Setting, Benders, Enemies to Friends, Enemies to Lovers, F/F, Firebender!Catra, Lovers To Enemies, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, avatar AU, catradora
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-20
Updated: 2020-05-15
Packaged: 2021-02-27 20:21:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 19,610
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22821691
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Book One: Water... Adora and Catra are Firebenders and competing cadets in the Fire Nation Military vying for the position of Force Captain in the occupied southern shelf of the Earth Kingdom. One-Hundred years after the Prime Fire Lord Hordak initiated a war with the rest of the world with the goal over everlasting peace, now Adora begins to feel a deep power and a feeling dread waking within her. Though a most loyal soldier and a lover of her country, deep down Adora can feel that not all is right with the world she lives in, or with the Fire Nation.
Relationships: Adora & Catra (She-Ra), Adora/Catra (She-Ra)
Comments: 18
Kudos: 60





	1. The Firebenders

_Air, Water, Earth, Fire. Long ago, the Four Nations lived together in harmony – the Earth Kingdom, the Water Tribes, the Air Nomads and the Fire Nation. Then, one day, everything changed when Prime Fire Lord Hordak commanded an attack on the rest of the world; he told us they were all conspiring against each other, and that to attack them was to save the world from an endless era of death and destruction. It was said that the great Avatar Mara led our Fire Nation into the first battle, striking a deadly blow against the warlike Earth Kingdom, but when our nation needed her most, she vanished..._

_A hundred years have passed and we have seen many Avatars fighting in what has now become the Hundred Years War – Air, Water, and Earth. Now our leaders are searching for the next Avatar to be born in the Fire Nation..._

_The Avatar that will lead us to victory in the war..._

“Adora... Adoraaa... Come on, wake up, Adora?” Catra kept chanting, poking into Adora’s side all the while, even laughing and smiling as she did. It took a while but the blonde finally opened her eyes slowly, getting what she thought was a lie-in for the first time in her life. But seeing Catra’s slightly tanned skin and mismatched eyes as the first thing when she woke forced her eyes opened a little more.

She stirred quickly, opening her eyes wide to see Catra looming over her. “Hey Adora...” she uttered again for what must have been over the hundredth time in their lives together. Adora could see she was already dressed and clad in the black plate uniform with the red accents, topped by the red headdress with the spikes flowing out like the pattern of a flame.

The blonde smiled, turning over a little and poking Catra in the nose. “Um, what’re you doing?” Catra asked, cocking an unimpressed look. But Adora kept pushing as she closed her eyes again.

“Looking for the snooze button so I can go back to sleep,” Adora teased, smiling and lurching up shortly after. She always joked like this. “So what has you up and dressed so early?” She asked, springing up in no time and clenching her fists – flames simmered in her fingers and thumbs, heating her fists like splendid balls of flame.

Adora was being her typical show-off self; her firebending had always been a league above Catra’s, yet not to completely overshadow the latter woman’s own ability. It was simply that something about Adora had her abilities in firebending outclass almost all of the others her age. There was nothing to it. She slipped into her suit armour without any hassle as if it were her nightwear or even her own hide. Adora could wear the proud armour of the Fire Nation at all times, she felt; as if it were second nature, and her destiny to wear the incredible uniform of her nation’s prestige, of its winning side in the war. Seeing her reflection in the mirror of the locker stack made Adora feel at home, and more so than being with the rest of the troop. Catra was staring at her already, admiring her bodice in the armour and observing her from head to toe once again. It was almost the same every morning with some variation as if everything was perfect as if nothing more than victory in the war could make the setting any better for either of them.

“What are you staring at?” Adora asked, fixing the straps on her gauntlets so they were made up tightly. Her whole suit was on point and more so than Catra’s. Adora had a presence to her, and tightness to her armour that made her look worthy to be an officer.

That was one race they were both competing in, as were the rest of the initiate troops.

“Hmmm, nothing,” Catra hummed, grinning like a cat. “Definitely not the next Force Captain, that’s for sure,” she chuckled, pushing off of the lockers and walking to the door of the barracks, her curled toes flicking against the wooden flooring of the acquired barracks.

“Yeah right, Catra,” Adora challenged, hiking up her boots and pressing her palm to her tummy, even admiring her own figure before going to her sword. All benders in the navy and military had their bending, but all were required to have their sword as a backup. Catra regularly avoided hers.

She stacked up against the door, blocking Adora’s way out and into the courtyard for the next phase of the swift training schedule. “What’re you gonna do about it, Adora? Are you gonna blast me with your big and scary firebending?” Catra goaded her partner, cackling like a typical teen in the Fire Nation army.

A quick blast of fire came right before Catra, singing the curled toes of her boots as Adora smiled at her own ability. “Maybe I will,” she teased back with a cocky yet friendly smile as her fists cooled from the display of her power. It was like breathing for her – fire and breathing, the two went hand in hand.

They laughed it off quickly, and Adora brushed past her partner to let them both out or else they’d be stuck in the cabin for the rest of the morning.

Exiting, they had just met morning roll call, with Lonnie shooting them daggers for almost missing the register and Kyle still fawning over Rogelio and vice versa. All were assembled in regiments and then into squads – Captain Scorpia headed Adora’s team, but that would soon all change as they ramped up to the next stage of their training. The Shadow Weaver was demanding more and more from the troop, all squads needed to intensify their training, and push deeper into Earth Kingdom territory. Adora couldn’t stop smiling as Catra shuffled in closer to her in the ranks, all standing at attention as The Shadow Weaver came to the head of the smaller army.

“What has you in such a good mood, huh?” Lonnie had to ask next to Adora. She sometimes couldn’t stand the grins both she and Catra would pull to each other; they were too casual about the war, treating it like a game. And their skills surpassing her own made the woman seethe all the more.

“Because you’re gonna be looking at the new Force Captain by sundown, watch me, Lonnie,” Adora boasted, smiling evermore with determined eyes. Catra jabbed her side.

“Not if I beat you there, Adora,” Catra chuckled.

Several voices beckoned them to quieten down, as The Shadow Weaver took to the head of the deployment to give her speech addressing most if not all of the army. Captain Scorpia at the vanguard of Adora’s squad observed her troopers, from the skull-masked nobodies of the body of the troop to the promising youths that were Adora and Catra, even Lonnie and Rogelio, just not Kyle. She told two or three troopers to silence themselves, and both Catra and Adora laughed at them getting the scolding before The Shadow Weaver made herself heard to the rest of the deployed force.

“Loyal soldiers, long have we fought into the Earth Kingdom, and for long have we been unmatched on our path to cripple the capital of Ba Sing Se!” She began, as usual, spewing the propaganda and immense words that inspired the body of the army, enough to extract their best ability and war faces.

Catra began to snigger in her step. “What’s so funny? This is The Shadow Weaver here,” Adora excused their esteemed leader, trying to get Catra to be silent like she was. Both of them were just waiting for the next exercise, which was to be their exam to determine who’d lead their attachment. But Catra could not stop giggling to herself.

“Exactly! So boring! Just let us at the damn Earthbenders and we’ll see who deserves to be the leader around here right?” Catra chuckled as if the rest of the war or the rest of the military didn’t exist at all. It was just Adora and Catra to her, just the two of them.

“Not everyone is as good at firebending as you are, Catra. The war can’t be won with just the pair of us,” Adora reminded her, showing more restraint and wisdom both, as well as tactics. She had a warlike mind, not a ravenous addiction for violence and battle as Catra had.

“... Captain Scorpia, your selections for the promotion of Force Captain?” The Shadow Weaver was asking, bringing Adora back to the speech and display taking place. It was impossible to contain her smile as her superior read off her own name as well as Catra’s and Lonnie’s, forcing an envious yet proud smile from the tanned woman to Adora’s right flank, and egregious grins from Catra to her left. They exchanged a quick fist bump with heat and fire in their fingers, warming their touch to the point where Adora was actively blushing as the heat Catra warmed into her heart. Catra could make her melt in any weather, any temperature – they could be in the South or the North Pole, and Catra could make Adora warmer than back at home in the Fire Nation proper.

They smiled together and Adora found a hand snaking into her own at her side, fingers intertwining and found it was Catra’s hand in her own. She was smiling.

“Captains, bring your selections to the final training scenario in the next village. For the glory for the Fire Nation!” The Shadow Weaver decreed, and the rest of the army retorted her chant as if a mantra instilled in them from birth. For many young enough, it was now, and a code to live by. For the glory of the Fire Nation.

Lonnie was silent as they waited after the rest of the army filed out of lines, Rogelio marching hand in hand with Kyle and back to the barracks to begin the rest of the daily routine. Catra took her hand back as soon as she noticed Adora looking at her, and blushed for good measure as they both looked embarrassed by happy. The three of them had been chosen, and none of them could hardly imagine it, save for Catra. Yet as she looked at Adora, Catra could sense that her own strength was not enough – that Adora was destined to win, but in her heart, she didn’t mind that, as long as she shared the glory with her. Of course, she would.

“Can you believe it, Catra? The final round! One of us is gonna become Force Captain after all,” Adora was chanting as if it were her birthday as if she couldn’t believe it still, but Catra knew that Adora was always going to be chosen. She was the best, and the Fire Nation deserved the best to win the war.

“Don’t get too cocky, Adora,” Lonnie reminded her, sharpening her dagger with a whetstone she always kept on her. Just like Adora, Lonnie’s uniform was spotless, yet just somehow not as perfect as the blonde’s, even with all the additional effort the darker-skinned woman made to be as outstanding as ever. She fell even short of Catra, which didn’t seem possible.

The feline-inspired woman came from around Adora, wanting to take this for her like they always used to do when bullied and prodded by The Shadow Weaver as orphans born into the military’s infant recruit programs. Neither Catra nor Adora had known their parents. Neither decided they needed to, as long as they had each other, and had the glory and the pride of the Fire Nation in their hearts they’d climb and climb and climb, them against the world until they could even be close to becoming Fire Lord themselves. Adora would always take that mantle, always claim the throne, and Catra would be right there with her, with absolutely nothing in the world – not even the next Avatar – to stop them.

“Stick a sock in it, Lonnie. You’ve got nothing on us, don’t even think you’re getting close to becoming Force Captain,” Catra spat back at her, her fists clenching and her spiked feet taking an instinctive fighting stance – she and Lonnie had tussled before, but not for a while.

“That’s a good attitude to have, Catra. Just don’t get in over your head, or you’ll be a sitting duck for those Earthbenders,” Scorpia told her, coming up on the small group of women with The Shadow Weaver striding next to her in a menacing manner.

“So these are your selections, Captain Scorpia?”

“Yes, ma’am. Adora, Catra, and Lonnie,” Scorpia reported chirper as usual but with a hint of wisdom in her voice that she was always keeping from everyone unworthy of it – including The Shadow Weaver.

“Adora I can understand, but the latter two are... Interesting selections, Captain Scorpia... Are you sure your failure at the Siege of Ba Sing Se does not still impact your decision making?” The Shadow Weaver asked, taking the jab at Scorpia that every single higher-up loved to take at her. “Six-hundred days is a lot to take a toll on any soldier, even more, when the outcome was ultimately defeat. Are you sure that Catra and Lonnie are the right material to claim victory for the Fire Lord in the Earth Kingdom?” She continued to scold and ridicule the still young officer. Captain, yes, but Scorpia had been a General once before, and demoted all the way down with defeat after defeat, not important enough to be killed at the Fire Lord’s hands for being such a consecutive failure. She still had her uses.

Still, Scorpia let it all bounce off of her broad shoulders and clenched upper body, strong as always, with a thicker skin than anyone in the Fire Nation. She’d be wearing her failure like a medal for the rest of her life – she knew that but it didn’t bother her, she had pride in the work she did and the soldiers she helped make, especially Adora, and especially Catra.

“I’d have any one of them leading a squad in one of my sieges, Shadow Weaver. I can assure you Catra and Lonnie have the right stuff. They’ll make the Fire Nation proud,” she told The Shadow Weaver, her spirit down-trodden and almost spat on as usual.

“I’m sure they will,” The Shadow Weaver grunted, moving to Adora to shake her hand. “Good luck, Adora. I’m sure you’ll exceed all expectations as usual in the final exam.”

Adora’s face lit up like a bonfire, her eyes wide enough they looked as if they were almost swelling with pride and patriotism. “Thank you, ma’am, I promise I won’t let you down,” she shot back with regimental stiffness, honoured decorum and performed precision.

The Shadow Weaver looked to Catra with her masked and totally demeaning eyes, looking down at the second-rate partner and silently judging her yet again. It was always the same when she was in the taller woman’s presence. When Adora was up for commendation and credited Catra too, so that the latter would have to follow and be commended with words or a gesture rather than a medal or badge, or when Adora had stormed an objective in training or a raid and had attributed some of her success to Catra, or when Adora had bested her friend in a duel and they pair of them were honoured for a sporting match in front of the top brass.

Nothing was said between The Shadow Weaver and Catra, but the younger woman could feel the other’s infernal ire and deathly stare, pushing her down and down and down into the dirt where she’d been constantly in front of her for years. It was as if Adora could do nothing wrong, and wrong was all Catra could out of nothing. That Adora was lucky and Catra was not; fairness versus oppression. But Catra liked to believe she didn’t care – because Adora was her best friend, her partner, and her everything. She had Adora, not The Shadow Weaver, and that because of that, wasn’t Catra truly the lucky one?

The taller woman left their presence without anything toward Lonnie at all. All three waited for Scorpia and together they moved into the area of the next village, the test about to begin.

* * *

“Alright, ladies,” Scorpia began, trying not to appear completely destroyed as usual. Catra could see it under her armour, but didn’t say anything – she had the utmost respect for Scorpia and her resolve, found kinship in their struggles, but kept a level head as she stood packed next to Adora, ready to lay down her own success for her if it meant they’d further up the ladder toward it. “You each have a symbol, and within the village are objectives marked as such. Your test is simple – secure your assigned objectives by any means necessary and report back here. The first to do so will be looked highly upon by The Shadow Weaver. The final to report back will not be.

“Good luck, ladies. And begin!”

Scorpia launched a swift and powerful fire blast into the air and each of the girls raced into the village. Lonnie wasted absolutely no time as soon as Adora got only one step ahead of her; the sun and the bloodlust for the blonde getting the better of her.

“I am not coming behind you both again,” she muttered to herself and flipped into the air, slamming her foot down onto the earth with a wave of fire cascading before Adora and Catra, halting them in their path.

Adora stopped in time, wrapping her arms around the air and dispersing the fire away from them both as Catra couldn’t stop. She leapt into the air and twirled, launching two powerful balls of flame at Lonnie with a determined smile as she travelled through the air. At the same time, Adora peppered Lonnie with the same treatment – more blasts albeit smaller yet in rapid succession. The attacker shed her helmet immediately and spun around on the ground, dodging some of the blasts from Adora while blocking Catra’s attack from above with moves of her own. Once the latter landed, they were squaring off, two on one.

“Lonnie, Lonnie, Lonnie... Never gonna learn, are you? You can’t tangle with us, you know that right?” Catra taunted to the lonely girl now staring down the two most powerful benders in their squad.

But Lonnie wasn’t looking threatened; she was even smiling as she looked behind her two opponents. “Oh, it looks like I won’t have to,” she told them both before casting another massive wave of fire between the two partners, separating them with a wall of flame and drawing their attention to the added struggle approaching them from behind. As she spotted them, Lonnie fled into the main body of the village.

Adora saw them, bare-chested and sporting for a fight with rocks already coming out of the ground and flying toward her and Catra. “Earthbenders!” She called at her partner. Catra was already hurling long spears of fire at them from her feet and fists as she leapt into the air again and unleashed a hellfire of cannon blasts at them to discombobulate them, readying the offensive for Adora’s intense firepower.

The blonde came flying over Catra’s helmeted head with a hurl of orange blazing through the air. A wall of fire came before the Earthbenders, stopping their rocks and turning their coals to combustion. More blasts followed from Catra’s fists, keeping the offensive up and they followed their honed and refined pattern – one attacked first with rapid shots like a ballista stacked for a machine’s rate of fire, while the other recharged and then came back at the quarry with massive and powerful flames to vary their attack pace and totally overwhelm their opponents. It was an attack strategy that Catra and Adora had worked years mastering now, and it never lost.

“Lonnie’s inside the village!” Adora told her partner, turning up the heat to insane levels and pushing the Earthbenders back into the forest.

“Then you have to get after her and secure your objective!” Catra called back to her, for now setting up a basic and regimented sequence of firebending forms to keep up suppression on the enemy as they cowered behind the trees. “Kick her butt and I’ll be right behind you to take second!” She called again and smiled, even mouthing a joking but secretly serious kiss.

Adora smiled again, blushing as she had when they were holding hands. “You better be!”

“Come on, when am I ever last, Adora?”

“When you’re behind me,” Adora joked and sent one last huge wave of flame to scorch and scar the trees before she jetted off into the village after Lonnie and her own objective. Catra was the best, putting her own success behind their teamwork. If Adora was to be Force Captain, she’d demand Catra be her second in command, it was only fair and only right. She couldn’t imagine herself without Catra.

Getting into the village was easy, then scouring the buildings for the objective even easier with her piece of paper in hand noting the symbol – a White Lotus flower from the tile game all the higher-ups seemed to play. Adora had never had a desire to learn to play it but felt as if her symbol would be on a building rather than just the objective, and she searched the doorway of every one of them until she found it. She could hear Lonnie ransacking each of the houses until she would find her own.

It was in one the first few houses that Adora searched where she found her objective – a marker of the White Lotus on the window shutter printed on the Fire Nation flag and her prize laying inside. As Adora saw it, she was underwhelmed in part, seeing just a long staff made of squared wood laying in the middle an empty and ransacked room. It looked to have used to have been a bedroom of sorts, telling by the tipped over beds and some scattered toys on the floor; not something Adora wasn’t used to seeing. The Fire Nation forced all the civilians away from the combat zones, she’d been told. All the Earthbenders were rounded up after surrendering every time and taken to either prison camps or back to the Fire Nation if they were part of the Earth Kingdom military. But the civilians were relocated to the occupied zones where they’d be safe from the conflict, but the populations there were oddly low for all the villages that they were taking. Yet still, it was all things Adora had come to see before, and the staff was why she was here, just the staff and then she’d need to beat Lonnie to the finish and claim her master prize.

Reaching for it, Adora felt strange, as if something was snaking its way up her spine under her skin and armour. The staff looked strange as if it wasn’t Earth Kingdom in its design at all – the squared nature of it looked counter to the architecture of Earth Kingdom houses and buildings and nothing like other toys of this part of the world. It wasn’t nearly spiked enough to be of Fire Nation origin, nor black enough. It couldn’t at all be Water Tribe, Adora thought, and she’d never seen anything Air Nomadic, no one had since Prime Fire Lord Hordak had wiped them out so they couldn’t attack the tribes first. That was what Adora had always read.

She reached forward, and touched the staff to take it, but recoiled almost immediately as her fingers trembled before it. Once contact was made, Adora was almost transported.

Visions flickered in her vision – Water Tribe, Earth Kingdom, Fire Nation, Air Nomads. The map of the world, spirits? Temples and villages, walls and keeps and fortresses all passed inside and out of her mind at hundreds of miles an hour until she reached forward. Her body was almost disconnected from her mind or her consciousness but Adora pressed forward and reached out for the staff that was the objective and took it into her hand. And then like a copper piece dropping to the floor, she had it in her grasp and was breathing before it.

There was no time to compress what had just happened into words or a reaction, and after a second of contemplation passed Adora decreed it too much and flinched out of the door into the village. She locked eyes with Lonnie carrying her own prize out of another house across the street and they both froze. Adora was surprised, off-guard suddenly by the divine experience that was just claiming her staff, but Lonnie looked furious to see Adora holding it.

“Adora!” Catra was shouting, holding a scroll in her hand – it must have been her own objective.

The blonde legged it, running away from Lonnie as she reached out with both fists and charged a massive fire blast. They were all running as fast as their six combined legs could take them down the hill and back to the archway that led to the Fire Nation camp. The Earthbenders were gone and Catra sprinted from the rear to throw Lonnie off of her attack at Adora. One of them had to win, Adora had to win.

_Adora_ had to win.

Catra channelled her firebending into the soles of her feet and propelled herself forward like a rocket, dropping her scroll as Adora sprinted for the archway. Lonnie launched her attack just as Catra came between her two opponents and put all of her strength into another fire blast. The two plumes of orange and red flames collided like two meteors, and Lonnie and Catra both fell from their positions in a huge explosion, combustion swallowing them both in smoke as Adora got to the finish line and dropped the staff at the feet of The Shadow Weaver and looked back to the aftermath of her victory.

When Catra got to her feet and opened her shaken and rattled eyes, she could see her partner shaking hands with The Shadow Weaver once again. She’d won, she’d done it, and Catra was smiling knowing she’d helped push her partner there.

There came a painful and vengeful scream from behind Catra as Lonnie dusted herself of the rubble of their clash and cried into the morning air.

“I said... I am _not_ coming behind you again, Catra!” She barked like a mad beast and before Catra could turn around and take a defensive stance to take more punishment, Lonnie had launched a final attack upon her.

The flames caught Catra’s hands, up to cover at least her face from the destructive power of the inferno, but her body launched from her position and flew back into the wall of a building, catching the brunt of Lonnie’s attack. Adora was oblivious until she heard the slam of more devastation to the village and looked back to see Lonnie limping but striding up to the archway with Catra’s scroll in her own hand. Not her objective, but as The Shadow Weaver clapped her return, Adora knew it didn’t matter.

Lonnie glared into Adora’s eyes, unwavering and ready to throw down again even if it meant she’d be defeated by her. A sinister smile crept across Lonnie’s face and in her eyes she gave her prideful message.

_Not coming behind you again, bitch._


	2. The Shrine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After the competition to make Adora a new Force Captain, she and Catra take an outing in the middle of the night together, like they always used to. To find a secluded spot and to be together before things begin to change forevermore, Adora and Catra wander deep into the forest near the Fire Nation encampment but in their wanderings, they find a shrine to the ancient Avatar Mara. Things begin to change forever...

_Air, Water, Earth, Fire. Long ago, the Four Nations lived together in harmony. Then, one day, everything changed when Prime Fire Lord Hordak commanded an attack on the rest of the world. It was said that the great Avatar Mara led our Fire Nation into the first battle, striking a deadly blow against the warlike Earth Kingdom, but when our nation needed her most, she vanished..._

_A hundred years have passed and we have seen many Avatars fighting in what has now become the Hundred Years War. Now our leaders are searching for the next Avatar to be born in the Fire Nation..._

_The Avatar that will lead us to victory in the war..._

The markings on her breastplate denoting her new rank felt almost dirty on Adora’s chest, especially since Lonnie’s actions had not only earned her a smaller yet still very real commendation but her place as Adora’s second. Scorpia stayed silent, but the blonde could sense her dissatisfaction and outrage at the whole thing – but The Shadow Weaver had enjoyed the show and admired Lonnie’s total ruthlessness for dispatching Catra in such an explosive fashion.

It was as if all that befell Catra and her systematic abuse and bad luck found itself admired in the eyes of The Shadow Weaver.

Adora didn’t look up once except when she had to at the medal ceremony, not wanting to see Catra from the crowd as the tall and imposing figure that was The Shadow Weaver pinned the medal on her chest. Hearing her talk about the accomplishment achieved felt even dirtier, and the whole time Adora wanted to challenge Lonnie to an Agni-Kai, anything to destroy her honour more than she’d destroyed it already in the unhanded win over Catra.

This wasn’t how it was supposed to be. Catra was meant to be her second, meant to be smiling a proud grin as The Shadow Weaver was forced to strap a smaller but still very real medal onto Catra’s breastplate, and then it’d be the two of them against her for the rest of their careers. Lonnie had destroyed it in the midst of her own ambition and mania to destroy Catra. Adora found her on the roof of the watchtower by the end of the day, watching the sunset on what had been their worst day of failure; none of it down to either of them in their own eyes.

“I brought you some tea, if you need it,” Adora peeped, holding the small cup of darling jasmine in her hands and keeping it warm with her palms as the wind crept in and blew Catra’s hair all over her. “Catra?” Adora asked upon no reply.

“I don’t want any tea,” Catra grunted back, not even looking to Adora below her, just at the sunset and reflecting on what she’d given up to project her partner without her. If she wasn’t so concerned for Adora’s success to pad out her own, she would have seen Lonnie’s attack coming, and could have bested her like she’d done time and again before. But her eyes for Adora had cost her, and now the woman donned a split lip and broken nose for her troubles. She was lucky she didn’t have a burn scar across her face from the fire too. It had been the first grace of luck life had gifted Catra before.

“Catra, I...”

“Didn’t you hear me, Adora? I don’t want any damn tea!” Catra screamed at her, lurching down and glaring at her with the yellow and blue eyes she had, dark bags under them and bruises over her face. Pain raced across her, and Catra had to let herself down with the agony shooting up and down her back.

Adora caught her and pulled her into the canopy of the watchtower. “I got ya, I got ya,” she was whispering, rubbing her partner’s back as best she could and applying heat to the wound to spur it to heal. Firebenders couldn’t heal anything, let alone as well as Waterbenders, but Adora had picked up a trick or two about aches and pains with Catra in her younger years to know how to quicken the mending process.

“Get away from me, you idiot,” Catra moaned, letting Adora handle her if only to warm her aching back now.

“What are you talking about?”

“You’re a Force Captain now... You won’t even have to bother with me again, Adora. This is the end for us...” Catra was wallowing, taking herself in her own arms and turning away from her partner, thinking it truly the end between them. She was so pumped half a day ago to perform the final exam, and it was all crumbled around her in ruins, and Adora was about to see that for herself. “If I hadn’t helped you win, I’d have come second, and we’d be captains together, just like we planned...”

Adora gently stroked Catra’s arm and shoulder, pulling her back to her and placing their foreheads together, close enough to kiss. “It can still be like we planned, Catra,” she promised her quickly, smiling sadly. “Tomorrow I’m gonna challenge Lonnie to an Agni-Kai and if she loses she’ll be out and I’ll have you as my second. The Shadow Weaver will have to pick you if Lonnie’s disgraced publicly in an Agni-Kai,” she explained methodically, sitting with her legs crossed in a very foreign way and handing Catra the tea she’d knew she’d drink. She always sat like that – legs folded as if meditating. But Fire Nation soldiers didn’t meditate; only Air Nomads and spiritual nuts did to get closer to the world and its spirits.

“You’re really gonna challenge Lonnie to an Agni-Kai?” Catra asked, chuckling slightly to herself as she sipped the still piping hot tea.

“Yeah, of course! I want you as my second Catra, not Lonnie. She doesn’t deserve and it and I’m gonna show The Shadow Weaver that I want you.”

“Awww, you really like me, you complete and total lame-o!”

Adora struggled; flustered at the trap she’d walked herself into, confessing it was because she wanted Catra. And Catra loved to tease her like this, always when she said something like this. The blush on Adora’s paler face was extraordinary. “It’s not because I _like_ like you!”

Catra was too busy laughing in her high-pitched cackle, the one Adora for some reason loved to hear. “Yeah right! You really said it this time, Adora... You totally like me, awww. What a total dork!”

“Shut up!” Adora begged of her, punching her partner’s arm and forcing an ‘ouch’ from Catra. Then they were both laughing at the state of her body and her own injuries. It often happened like this; Adora would win, and Catra would have the bruises and scars to tell about it, and then Adora would always bring her tea and they’d cry or laugh about the latest escapade they’d add to their war journals. And it would always end with one of them suggesting a crazy idea to shirk lights out and leave the camp alone.

Catra suggested it this time. “Wanna go explore? Like we used to do?” She asked Adora, sipping the rest of the tea and setting the small cup on the railing of the watchtower.

“Where’d you have in mind?”

* * *

“Ugh, did you _have_ to bring that stick?” Catra asked, about an hour or two into their trek into the woods, the sun fully set and Adora hoisting a small yet luminous lamp on the squared end of her new staff.

It had been her objective, and now it was her toy, her prize, her reminder to her however bittersweet victory. And oddly enough she felt a certain affinity to the odd staff, a kinship than felt deeper and more profaned than her relationship with her own Fire Nation uniform and the fire-inspired ornament that held up the bun of her hair. Catra had the same hair decoration, but in a deeper shade of crimson whereas Adora’s was bright and magnificent orange. It’d mirror her new accent of armour – orange always denoted a higher-ranking member of the military or navy. Scorpia’s was orange, and The Shadow Weaver’s was strikingly golden.

Now Catra’s would remain red until Adora could challenge Lonnie and have the decision shut out in the eyes of other higher-ups than The Shadow Weaver.

“It’s either this or I have to carry the lantern. Plus I can’t put my finger on it but this thing doesn’t look like the other Earth Kingdom or Fire Nation stuff, ya know?” Adora mused, looking up and down her new fancy stick as she slowed and Catra trudged ahead of her by a step or two, looking bored of the discussion already.

“You think too much, Adora. What else could it be? It’s definitely not Water Tribe, and the Air Nomads haven’t been a threat for almost a hundred years,” Catra riddled off like a history book they’d had read to them in a childhood lesson with the rest of the initiates.

She was right – the Air Nomads had not been seen as a threat since their last Avatar, the one proceeding Avatar Mara and the greatest threat perceived against the Fire Nation in a century. The lesson was still instilled in Adora’s mind like she was hearing for the first time upon reflection. The Avatar disliked the global war, and called for Prime Fire Lord Hordak to stop the fighting; if he refused, the Avatar decreed they would destroy the Fire Fleet and isolate the nation for the rest of their life, and that all Avatars proceeding would do the same. Hordak destroyed them after an epic campaign against the Air Nomads, and the rest of that nation paid the price for their Avatar getting in the way of the Fire Nation’s quest for global peace. Adora smiled as she remembered the glorious tale, and looked over her staff. What if it was of the Air Nomads? A surviving relic of the warlike footing the civilisation had stepped up to in the name of conflict against the rest of the world? The thought of owning such a staff made her feel proud of her ability now, even as Catra scoffed at it and trudged onward.

“You think the Air Nomads could still be alive? We’re not far from the Southern Air Temple right?” Adora asked, her bewilderment and imagination getting the better of her.

Again, Catra scoffed and rolled her eyes. She didn’t like it when her partner got worldly eyes and bright ideas like this, thinking of the wider world. What did the wider world matter? Surely it was only them? Against the rest of the world, they only needed each other, not even the Fire Nation at times; soon they’d have all the influence in it they could ever need. So what did some stupid Air Nomads matter to them? This was always how it was in Catra’s mind – only she and Adora mattered at all times, nothing else.

“Who cares, Adora? They’re all gone, right? Prime Fire Lord Hordak saw to that in the first decades of the war. They were a threat and now they’re gone!” She started shouting and walking backwards, looking actively annoyed as her back still ached from the pain there.

Adora recoiled and held her staff close. She could swear it was beginning to vibrate in her hands, with wisps of more visions creeping into the corners of her eyes. Was that an Air Temple? A Water Tribe? Could she see earth moving?

“Wow, Catra, sorry,” Adora mumbled, stopping and then carrying on with Catra now leading them a little.

Before long, after just under another hour or so, the path through the sparsely knitted trees began to open up all the more and become lighter. Catra beckoned for Adora to snuff out the lantern and the blonde clenched her fist to bend the flame down to embers on the wick. The woods were not suddenly lit by the sun or by a series of enemy lights, but little orbs of bright yellow floating all around them. Fireflies, gathering and becoming more copious in number as Adora and Catra kept walking with light and silent feet. They couldn’t risk being seen or noticed by any enemy force, and kept their profiles low, with Adora sheathing the staff around her back with the thread sling she’d made for it. They both had their fists clenched and ready to firebend their way out of a situation if one arose, but there was certainly no one left in the woods beside Adora and Catra, and the horde of fireflies somehow getting more numerous as they continued.

“We should probably head back, it’s getting late and there could be anyone out here,” Adora tried whispering as Catra led her deeper into the woods as if there was a destination in mind somehow. Catra said nothing and kept walking, Adora helpless to follow her.

“Hey! Catra! We should head back!” Adora shouted in a whisper again and reached forward to grip her partner’s arm. Catra snatched it back quickly and looked back smiling, excited almost by the sudden setting around them.

“I heard you,” Catra told her, still smiling and stopping slightly, seeing the concern in her partner eyes. She mellowed and lost her serious and aggravated edge, coming closer to Adora and holding her hand again. She was holding her hand again – Adora couldn’t control her blushing cheeks and in this light, there was no way Catra couldn’t see the current rose in her face. “Hey... Just a little longer, okay? Then we’ll go back. I just wanna explore a little more, kay?” Catra asked, her voice like sparkling but so soothing water against Adora’s skin. Catra’s hand came to hold her cheek and Adora couldn’t help but be whisked away to nirvana.

She breathed out her tension and Adora’s body felt all the better for it as she grasped Catra’s hand back in return and looked deeply into her eyes. “Okay, just a little longer, then we head back.”

There was a gap of a few minutes, and they found a row of bushes, guarding a small clearing in the thicket of trees. It appeared to be where all of the fireflies were heading, and as the girls peeked into the cornucopia, they saw the little insects dancing on the wind and bobbing as if to the music of kinds. And in the middle of the tranquil clearing was a statue made out of stone, taller than the pair of them and totally isolated. It looked almost regal and carved to be in a noble dress.

Catra was the one to jog out and look at it first, Adora calling after her in a tactile whisper. But she couldn’t stop her partner, nothing could – Catra leapt out from cover and walked up to the statue as if to greet a new stranger, and her eyes were full of awe.

“Adora...”

“It’s... Avatar Mara...” Adora spoke in the same awe that had washed over Catra.

The bowed in reverence to their nation’s last Avatar and then looked closer, completely bewildered as to why a statue of one of their home’s greatest heroes would be sitting here in the Earth Kingdom, completely moss-covered and looking older than both of them combined. However it appeared here, it was not of Fire Nation design and homage to their home in a newly conquered territory. This statue was almost if not a hundred years old.

“But what’s she doing out here? And why does she look so old?” Catra was asking suddenly, as Adora got a little closer to examine the face of the statue.

Not many relics remained in the Fire Nation to attest to the likeness of Avatar Mara. This was the first time Adora had seen really what the last Firebender Avatar looked like. And she was beautiful. Her eyes looked to be made of some ancient glass, and around her neckline were jewels of jet and ruby to denote her affinity to the Fire Nation. On her face looked a stoic look but she was certainly smiling in a still regal and wise way as if her own statue kept secret some knowledge that would be forever missing from the world.

She reached out, ready to touch Mara. _Just one touch, just one touch and then back to camp, just one touch_. She kept telling herself one as she smiled, Catra admiring it too. Adora reached out to touch Mara’s statue and all was blocked out.

“Adora!” Catra screamed out.

An arrow shot from the tree line, flying like a comet at Adora and sticking into her shoulder as she reached to touch the statue. It dug in deep and she was suddenly on her knees before Avatar Mara with pain shooting all over her body and blood already oozing from her wound. “Adora!” Catra was screaming more and more as nothing could pierce the blonde’s ears except the pain in her arm. Her body was numb as she pulled the arrow out of her shoulder but it made it all the worse, blood tricking inside of her uniform – it’d gone right between the gaps in her armour and suddenly she and Catra were surrounded.

“Who are you?!” Catra cried out, daggers made of flame coming out of her fierce and balled fists as she took a fighting stance amidst their now group of attackers.

“None may trespass in the field of Avatar Mara and leave with their lives! You will pay for wandering here, Fire Nation murderers!” One of the ambushers shouted at her – a woman’s voice slightly muffled by the cloth obscuring her mouth and most of her face, but Catra could still see the pastel pink of hair under her hood. The ambusher had her fists opened to precise palms. An Earthbending stance? Catra had never seen a stance like that.

She was the only unarmed of the ambushers – another held the bow and arrow that had struck Adora, and the others were armed with bolos and more staves. These were not Earthbenders.

Catra eyed them all and then shot her glance back to Adora on the floor, her hand pressurising the wound in her shoulder. She was going nowhere for now. It would be Catra on her own against non-benders. They had to be non-benders, the woman was certainly no Earthbender. Perhaps a chi-blocker? Catra didn’t want to find out, she regulated her fearful breathing and cast a plume of flame at the attackers, right at the girl with pink hair.

“Leave us alone!” Catra bellowed over the spitting sensation of erupting fire from her fists.

The attackers dodged and the woman was immediately isolated. More arrows came from the archer but Catra split her concentration and twirled into a fire-spinning kick display. More flames hugged the trees until the surrounding area began to burn. The non-benders fled into the woods save for the unarmed woman and the archer. More arrows flew at Catra as the woman found a safe spot away from the fire attack Catra unleashed upon her, but more spitting jabs of fire melted the arrows before they could pierce her.

Catra eyed the girl running between burning trees and anticipated her movements, readying a colossal fireball attack. She sent it flying as more arrows came at her forearms, only this time Catra couldn’t see or time her attacks to burn them and found herself pinned to a tree for good measure. But that didn’t matter, she sent her fireball at the woman from her offhand and waited for a clean kill.

The masked woman saw the fireball and gasped audibly.

“Glimmer!” The archer shouted and Catra couldn’t believe her eyes.

Her fireball dissipated in a flurry of cast air, and the heat dispersed upward into the trees. She was an Airbender. The masked woman the archer called Glimmer was an Airbender. Catra was in complete shock.

When her attack was dealt with, Glimmer turned to the archer and he shot more arrows into Catra’s uniform, at her legs and greaves, as if he knew where all of the gaps in Fire Nation armour was. She was pinned to the tree-like she was nothing, followed by her arm, and then followed by a net. Catra’s breath erupted and she burned as much as she could the netting away to then see the arrows sticking her into the wood and bark of the burning tree. Her firebending had set the entire clearing ablaze now and soot and ash were raining down on all of them from the melting and smoking trees.

“Bow! Grab her! We’re taking her back!” Glimmer ordered the archer, pointing to Adora still in immense pain on the floor and trying to stay conscious from the pain.

Catra heard everything and tried to quicken the burning of her restraints. “No!” She panicked, trying to get free to help Adora. “Adora! Run! Go!” She tried to bellow over the sound of burning bark becoming firewood all around them.

The archer called Bow sheathed his bow and arrow and picked Adora up like she was nothing. The Airbender joined him and they were away like the very wind the Glimmer had blasted at Catra’s attack – there was absolutely nothing Catra could do as she tried to burn the arrows out of her body.

“Adora!” She cried out again, but they were away, and Adora was taken with them. “No...”


	3. The Avatar Returns, Part 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> With Adora captured by a band of mysterious bandits, Catra races back to camp to secure the help of Rogelio, Kyle, and her new bitter rival Lonnie to get her love back. Meanwhile, Adora begins to learn about the real history of the world around her, and her perfect view of the Fire Nation begins to crack little by little.

_Air, Water, Earth, Fire. Long ago, the Four Nations lived together in harmony. Then, one day, everything changed when Prime Fire Lord Hordak commanded an attack on the rest of the world. It was said that the great Avatar Mara led our Fire Nation into the first battle, striking a deadly blow against the warlike Earth Kingdom, but when our nation needed her most, she vanished..._

_A hundred years have passed and we have seen many Avatars fighting in what has now become the Hundred Years War. Now our leaders are searching for the next Avatar to be born in the Fire Nation..._

_The Avatar that will lead us to victory in the war..._

Catra snuck back into the barracks, rousing Lonnie, Kyle and Rogelio as quickly as she could and practically pulling them outside and into the break between the captured buildings that worked as the official houses in the makeshift camp, careful to dodge the guards that were now patrolling the inside and outside of the walls. She didn’t want to wake Lonnie but knew there was no other way to get Adora back, especially if her eyes hadn’t been mistaken and that the Glimmer she’d seen taking away Adora was indeed an Airbender.

“Get real, Catra. Like heck, she was an Airbender!” Lonnie argued immediately, more abrasive than a brick. “They’ve been extinct for almost a hundred years. And you’re telling me one just made off with Adora? Nice try, where is she?” She asked, her eyes glowing a little red as rage raced across her face.

She was in no mood to fall into one of Catra’s games and no doubt this was a ploy to get her split off from camp as well as Kyle and Rogelio and take her out so Catra could assume her standing. They’d make a trap and make it all look as if Earthbenders dispatched her – Kyle and Rogelio would find her broken body, crushed by rocks probably and report back that she’d been killed in action. Catra would then take her rank and Adora and her girlfriend would have the perfect life they’d carved out for themselves.

Lonnie was not about to fall for this, and she trudged back to the barracks or tried to before Catra got in her way.

“I’m telling you she was an Airbender! And they’ve got Adora. I’m not making this up, Lonnie. Look at my uniform!” She argued, showing off the holes punctured from the arrows the boy called Bow had launched into her to pin her to the trees. The scene played out again. All the way until they both hoisted Adora off of the ground and she fainted as they pedalled off with her in tow. Lonnie was seething as she looked at Catra in her way.

“Get the hell outta my way, Catra. I don’t care. If she’s really gone, go get her yourself. There’s not even an Air Temple anywhere near here,” she was riddling off with a heatwave of anger in her voice and boisterous fury in the movements of her arms as she clasped fingers over Catra’s forearm to remove her.

If Adora was actually gone, it would be only Lonnie’s gain, and she liked the idea of that. Until Kyle had to speak. “Actually, we’re about a day’s walk from the Southern Air Temple, so there is a possibility that the girl _could_ have been an Airbender... If any still survived from Prime Fire Lord Hordak’s war against them...” Kyle reported.

Lonnie stopped dead and slinked back into the shadows between the buildings. She gripped the collar of his undershirt and pulled him close with menacing eyes and equally menacing fists, looking ready to burn him to crisp. But Catra’s presence behind her stopped her dead in her tracks and made her listen to what was to come next. True, Adora’s absence would cause Lonnie to ascend all the more, but she was missing one vital piece of information into her calculations – Adora’s prized relationship with The Shadow Weaver and the latter’s extreme preference for her over both Catra and Lonnie. While The Shadow Weaver loved to watch Catra fail and for Adora to succeed, she didn’t care at all for Lonnie at all, which was worse.

“If The Shadow Weaver finds out that Adora’s gone... I wonder who she’s gonna blame.”

Lonnie spun like a top and created fierce daggering in under her fists out of roaring but silent fire. “You, Catra. She’s gonna blame you and you’ll be roasted alive in an Agni-Kai,” Lonnie spat at her, but Catra was smiling and no doubt thinking differently.

Catra was still smiling when Lonnie clicked to what she was silently hinting at and lowered her fire daggers until they dissipated entirely and she knew Catra had already found revenge now – or at least would. She was right, without even saying anything. The Shadow Weaver wouldn’t blame the rankles initiate for losing Adora – she’d blame the Force Captain’s second in command for it and Lonnie would be torn limb from limb by the overlord. They’d have to find her, and find her soon.

Lonnie sighed heavily and looked at the floor. “Where did they attack you then? We need to find Adora before anyone notices she’s gone...”

* * *

Adora woke up in chains, her wrists bound together and her fingers even feeling numb. She could hardly move most of her arms or legs, but could do so enough to sit up and see the roaring fire in the middle of the campsite and the faceless attacks surrounding her in perpetual vigilance. There were arrows and blades brandished at her as well as a woman holding only a net. That looked rather random but Adora didn’t focus too much on it and looked immediately to the woman holding nothing at all with her hood up and a mask covering the lower half of her face. Adora couldn’t remember much of the battle; her ears blocked out by the pain her arm.

Her arm!

She curved her head over and saw the arrow was gone and it had been bound up and bandaged better than most Fire Nation medics could have done. She still felt a sharp prickling of pain but not more than she could handle; if anything her most pressing concern now was her state of capture, and how she wondered if she could muster enough feeling in her numb fingers to firebend the shackles off of her wrists and fight back. “Don’t try it, Firebender!” The archer snapped at her as he saw her looking at her cuffs. “I shot you with a dose of muscle relaxant from some frogs. You won’t be firebending for a while with that in your system,” he told her, relaxing his arm and letting the arrow slacken in his bow. Adora tried to relax, breathing cautiously and trying to regulate the heat within her – it was true what the archer had said, there was no bending capability within her right now. Whatever toxin was in her, it was stopping her from bending entirely; she was helplessly captured until Catra could come for her. Until then she’d have to wait and remain in captivity. The woman in the mask stirred and remained sat up when the archer and the rest of the attackers began to rest once more; of course, Adora couldn’t dare sleep.

“Something you wanted to say?” Adora asked the unarmed woman glaring at her, trying not to incur any punishment for attitude. Her expression was stoic and with but a little bit of gripe.

The woman came closer, removing her mask and hood to reveal pastel pink hair and a beautiful complexion. Her skin was olive-tinted and with a hint of tan, freckles doting on her cheeks and with gorgeous and big eyes that appeared like portals into another realm free of war and conflict. It caused Adora to gasp, her body shaking when she looked into her captor’s eyes but she wasn’t fearful or enraged with a need to break free. As the women looked at each other, it was as if they shared a beat, a strand of destiny connecting them through the vacant space between them – Adora could hear and feel every crackle of the kindling and twigs that served as the firewood. The flames were a perfect backdrop to the moment both shared.

As if lost in the woman’s eyes, Adora had to notice something else about her body as well – the bright blue of an arrowhead coming downwards on the woman’s forehead. Adora knew that mark, had read about it in her early education. It was the mark of the Air Nomads, of monks that attained a high rank and of Airbenders that were more powerful than others. The tattoos were a staple of their society, which mean that this woman was one of them.

Adora couldn’t believe her eyes. “You’re a... You’re an...” Adora bumbled and stuttered.

“I’m an Airbender. That’s right,” the woman affirmed. “No thanks to your Fire Nation friends. Thanks to you people, I’m one of the last Airbenders alive in the world today... After your Prime Fire Lord Hordak wiped us all out,” the woman spat at Adora, not showing an overwhelming amount of emotion in her words. They were not filled with bile or hate or fury, rather an undertone of righteous belief and matter-of-factly in tone.

The severity of what she was saying and the ineffable eye contact she maintained with Adora during the whole sentence made the blonde Firebender lean back, taking aback as well with the words. But she found herself instinctively cracking a smile, one of pure arrogance and vanity as a Firebender and of the Fire Nation. The woman had no right to feel so scorned, or shouldn’t have – she was speaking as if the Prime Fire Lord Hordak had destroyed the Air Nomads without cause, but everyone knew that he had only done it because the so-called nomads were plotting to attack others and that the war was totally inevitable. Adora had learned it all in her lessons, how Prime Fore Lord Hordak ignited the war to save the world from itself, and how Avatar Mara had helped him, knowing a pre-emptive strike against the Air Temples and the Earth Kingdom was the only course of action to avoid a longer and even bloodier struggle.

“The Prime Fire Lord attacked the Air Nomads to save the world from your plotting and inevitable war,” Adora countered, closing her eyes and remembering what the history books of the Fire Nation had taught her. “Avatar Mara helped him, it was a bloody struggle but eventually the Fire Nation overpowered your people and won that war,” she finished.

When Adora looked back up to the Airbender, she could see tears were in her eyes. “That’s what you were told, huh?” She forced through gritted teeth as she fisted the ground and began to sob.

“That’s the truth... It’s what...” Adora began to slow down, her mental faculties taking charge and feeling something was wrong deep down with what she was saying. It was what everyone was told, wasn’t it? Not just in the Fire Nation, but in the Water Tribes and in the Earth Kingdom. It’s what happened... Wasn’t it? The archer, Bow, was on his feet and standing over her and the Airbender, leaning down and wrapping his arms around her, cradling her as she began to sob deeply and unstoppably into his padded chest. Meanwhile, Bow glared at Adora with fire in eyes. For a non-bender, that fire was brighter and bathed in more anger than any fire she’d seen before, out of anyone in the Fire Nation.

“It’s what everyone was told... Right?” He asked her, plain and simple. Adora nodded, not knowing what else to say or do to get his fiery gaze away from her anytime soon. She was a Firebender, and yet the resolute and iron stare Bow was giving her was totally unlike even the hottest fire of the volcanoes of her home nation. It was fantastically hot against her skin, and she was beginning to sweat as he comforted the Airbender and stroked her bright pink hair. “Yeah, I kinda figured that,” he told her with no compassion at all in his voice. More and more Adora began to sink into herself as if she was made of quicksand. “I don’t care who you are, but if you have any sense at all, you’ll look into my eyes and look at the crying Airbender who’s one of the only ones left in the world, and you’ll know that what you just said, is completely wrong,” he told her, his voice stronger than the iron of any hull of any ship in the Fire Nation’s fleet.

Adora didn’t offer any kind of retort, and deep down, she did sense that something about the entire encounter now was wrong. She looked back on her teachings and the war and began t put all she’d seen, what little of it, into perspective with what she was seeing now. “Why is there a statue of Avatar Mara in the Earth Kingdom? Why she anywhere near here?” Adora asked as Bow settled the Airbender down to rest and dry her eyes.

He turned back with a look of surrender in his eyes, as if he’d already given up completely. “Because Avatar Mara didn’t help your Prime Fire Lord Hordak wipe out the Air Nomads,” Bow told her with nothing but the truth on his face and no telling of deceit in his eyes. Everything he spoke was accompanied by sincere eyes that Adora couldn’t fathom already. “She tried to save them from him... She died here, and Avatar Spinnerella was born as the survivors fled Hordak’s slaughter.”

At that, Adora instinctively smiled again, with a puff of laughter not meaning to but escaping her anyway. What he was saying was absurd, even if she did have a feather in her cap ready to believe some of what they were saying. The reaction from the Airbender seemed too organic for it to be performed or improvised, but Bow was trying to counter and contradict everything of Avatar Mara that Adora had been told. She wasn’t ready to abandon her nation’s saint like that all too quickly.

“You don’t believe me, huh?”

“Of course I don’t,” Adora snapped back at him, finding faith in what she had been told about Avatar Mara. She was a war hero and a role model to all born in the Fire Nation. Adora could not abandon or lose her faith in the legend of Avatar Mara, no matter what state the person trying to persuade her was in. Suddenly she clicked that she was still a prisoner and remembered that Catra would be coming to get her.

Catra wouldn’t give up on her, so Adora couldn’t give up on the Fire Nation. They were the best nation in the world and she had to remember that.

“You don’t have to now... You’ll see once we reach the next village. Right before you face justice for what you’ve done as a part of the Fire Nation. Before then, you’ll believe what I’m telling you. They all do, in the end,” he threatened, before leaving Adora to look away from him and at the dirt of the floor.

They all did? She’d find out tomorrow, for sure, before whatever sense of justice of the enemy befell her. Hopefully Catra would reach her in time. As she looked at the floor, pushing her body to the side and to the ground, she looked at the Airbender, Glimmer, laying on her side with her back to Adora and still silently weeping to herself as Bow returned to his bedroll. Something gnawed at the back of Adora’s mind and she couldn’t begin to think what all of this meant. The visions from the staff crept into her brain and made her think even more – by the time she managed to close her eyes for good over the crackling and glow of the fire, the sun was beginning to get higher and higher into the sky. She dreamed that Catra would find her quickly.

She was kicked awake without getting any proper sleep, Bow glaring down at her and two others pulling her to feet. It had been so long since Adora had slept in her uniform that the feeling of waking up in it had never felt worse. Her bones ached and her joints felt almost soggy; her legs most of all. Breakfast was light and water was scarce and before Adora knew it they were walking. She was wedged between two of the nameless and faceless non-benders – the one who had nothing but nets and another who carried a club, while the Airbender and Bow took point.

Glimmer was feeling better, she held close to Bow and occasionally couldn’t help but look back to the Firebender, spotting her as she was looking to the floor. Some of the times she sniped back, the Firebender would look up instantly ant Glimmer would be forced to look away again in a flash.

“Why are you looking at her so much, Glimmer?” Bow had to ask after the eighth time he saw her pink hair turning in his peripheral vision. He reached down and gripped her hand.

“There’s something about her, Bow, I can’t help shaking the feeling she’s not like the others we’ve seen or captured...” Glimmer had to confess.

It had been on her mind all night and now all morning, ever since they’d spotted her and her friend in the woods clearing. Something about the blonde had spoken out to Glimmer other than the staff she was holding. She read as peculiar, looked even more so and Glimmer could not escape the feeling in the cosmic energy around her that there was something different about this Firebender. It was why Glimmer had elected to speak to her the previous night.

“I hate to burst your bubble, Glimmer, but she’s totally identical to the other’s we’ve captured this year,” Bow retorted, allowing his anger to speak for him more than anything. “She riddled off the same textbook Fire Nation education they all do, and wouldn’t budge when I tried to reach out. Glimmer she’s no different to every other mindless soldier the Fire Nation sends in the Earth Kingdom.”

“But what if _she_ isn’t, Bow?” Glimmer asked, even pleading with him to think it over as they both looked back and forth to Adora and each other. “What if she _can_ be different?” Glimmer asked again, trying to imagine a life where all of her thoughts and feelings weren’t constricted by war.

“What are you getting at, Glimmer?” Bow had to ask, slowing down and almost unleashing his frustration.

Glimmer pulled the staff they’d confiscated from Adora off of his back and slammed it into his chest. “This, Bow... It’s an Airbender’s glider... And she didn’t even know what it was but she carried it anyway as an Airbender would! She didn’t even know what it was and she was carrying it anyway!” Glimmer cawed at him, running away with her head and her theories already as she tended to do. But the staff and her feelings about the Firebender were hard to ignore, even as Bow took the former from her again and slung it around his back.

“It’s a trophy, Glimmer,” he told her sternly, trying to protect her as he glared back to Adora in the rear. But he couldn’t deny his best friend, even when she made little sense like this, it spoke to how desperate they really were in the middle of this war. He looked back at her and saw her eyes. “Just... Wait until we get to the next village, then you can talk to her again and find out what you wanna know, I just...” He couldn’t finish.

“What, Bow?” She asked longingly.

“I don’t want to see you hurt again. Not again, Glimmer,” Bow begged of her, ploughing onward and up the hill with the Airbender at his side looking suddenly at the floor and thinking about what they had both said as well as their Firebender captive.

Adora was meanwhile struggling at her chains, trying to budge her hands free from the shackles as quietly as she could, but they would not budge no matter how slight she made her movements. The toxin that Bow had shot her full of was still within her system, and while she could warm her fingertips a little bit, as a child could, she couldn’t warm her palms or wrists or breath enough to melt the metal from her wrists. She was still bound for the moment, looking around the mountain pass and hoping Catra was somewhere in the tree line and shrubbery ready to break her free.

“Eyes right ahead, Firebender,” the woman with the net jabbed into her back to keep her moving, smiling to herself that Adora was the one in chains and not her. “There’s nothing to see around here anyway, especially not any Fire Nation soldiers coming to rescue you any time soon.”

“But they’re coming. You have to know that right? They’ll have been on my trail since the moment I didn’t report to roll call this morning. It’s only a matter of time until they find me here and then you’ll be the one in chains,” Adora snapped at the woman, feeling her control slipping further and further away from her fingertips. Catra wasn’t going to leave her, was she?

The woman and the man in front of Adora began to chuckle, amused at the Firebender’s resolve and her sense of her humour. “Trust me, Firebender...” The net woman jabbed again, pushing her. “There’s no one coming for you. They didn’t come for anyone else.”

“Else?”

“Yeah, you’re not the only Fire Nation soldier to find their wrists in chains at our hands, girl. But Bow’s right... You’ll believe the truth by the time you see judgement handed down from the council,” the man at her front practically yelled back to her, even causing Bow to look back at his name as she saw him. He turned his head again when she spotted his mellow whiskey eyes.

“Netossa!” Bow yelled to the flank, and the dark-skinned woman with the net went running around Adora’s side up to him.

Adora chuckled a little. “Netossa?” She asked, curious as to the name, it felt so strange and out of place as a name of a woman and a warrior woman at that. Adora didn’t know what she was expecting from someone like her, but the name struck her as funny for some reason.

The woman glared back at her. “Yeah? Netossa – I toss nets! Straightforward enough for ya?!” She yelled back in a gripe and ran up to Bow. Adora couldn’t hear at all what they were talking about.

She looked around again at the mountain pass and all the trees around them, obscuring them from the air and most of the sides in all directions except in front and behind them further down or along the road. No idea where she was going, Adora wondered if she ever wanted to know and if Catra would find her at all where they were going. As she looked around further, Adora settled that she’d be okay, so long as Catra was and as long as she got back to camp safely. As long as Catra was okay, Adora would find a way to get back to her, and they’d teach these captors a lesson or two, together.

Netossa returned with a rag in her hands, looking to the man who’d been guarding Adora with her and he stopped and turned to her, making sure her cuffs were tight and there was no warmth in her hands at all – that she still couldn’t bend. After making sure she was secure, he nodded to Netossa and she approached again as Bow and Glimmer pressed onward together, leading the entourage.

“Don’t try to scream. We wouldn’t want to gag that pretty Fire Nation mouth of yours,” Netossa threatened with a fake smile, placing the raggedy bag over Adora’s head. That meant only one thing – they were getting close to wherever their destination was.


	4. The Avatar Returns, Part 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> While Adora learns more about the world and about herself, the Rebels take her to a sympathetic village while they plan their next move. There, Adora encounters another oddity and begins to hear voices all around her. She is finally free when the village comes under attack from Fire Nation forces, and Adora is forced to make the most difficult choice of her life when a harsh truth reveals itself to her.

_Air, Water, Earth, Fire. Long ago, the Four Nations lived together in harmony. Then, one day, everything changed when Prime Fire Lord Hordak commanded an attack on the rest of the world. It was said that the great Avatar Mara led our Fire Nation into the first battle, striking a deadly blow against the warlike Earth Kingdom, but when our nation needed her most, she vanished..._

_A hundred years have passed and we have seen many Avatars fighting in what has now become the Hundred Years War. Now our leaders are searching for the next Avatar to be born in the Fire Nation..._

_The Avatar that will lead us to victory in the war..._

They slammed Adora into a room and sealed the door without even lifting the bag off of her head, leaving her to do it on her own as she looked at the door with fury in her eyes. The room was dark save for a small creak of light coming from the back, illuminating most of the hall in a hazy morning light. Adora didn’t look beyond the threshold of the door as she thumped her fists against the hardwood of it in a defiant display for the first time since they’d captured her. After the bag, she’d had enough of playing nice.

“Hey! Get in here! You can’t treat me like this!” She bellowed through the slit in the doorway at Netossa and the man who’d hauled her the rest of the way from the mountain pass. Now Adora had no clue where she was, not what village, near what mountain – they’d walked a fair way after she’d been blinded and they’d even carried her so she’d have no idea which way they were going.

Netossa laughed at her from the other side of the door. “It’s no worse than the way we’ve all been treated by your own glorious Fire Nation. Welcome to the war, lady, enjoy your stay!” She called back and left out of another door a ways away, leaving Adora completely alone.

_Adora..._

She spun around on her heels so fast they almost caught fire on the stone floor and finally Adora was looking at the rest of the room. “Who’s there?!” She called out, her hair beginning to fray and come out of the bun it was held in; blonde streaks coming over her forehead and into her eyes. The voice that had called her name was nowhere now, and Adora was alone, save for the horde of statues in the second half of the room with her. They were all taller than Adora, all with similar expressions as she got closer to the first one at their head – the overall body of the statue audience was assembled in an arrowhead formation, with one tall and proud-looking man at the head. Behind her were two more, another man and a woman, all dressed differently and all looking each as their own person, not made to look uniform but as if sculpted to appear as different as they could. Upon closer inspection of the leading man, Adora noticed that his sculpted garb was the Earth Kingdom in origin, with the insignia of the Earth Kingdom on his torso and a stern look in his eye. He looked a little older than the two behind her, while they were both youthfully smaller and different to him. He had a beard sculpted into the rock and ears pierced, rather feminine-looking for an Earth Kingdom man but he looked rather beautiful too, holding a staff very dissimilar to the Air Nomad staff Adora had taken from her. The man behind his left shoulder, to Adora’s right, was dressed in traditional Water Tribe parka and warm clothing, with a stylish moustache over his top lip, and then next to her, the woman was in Air Nomad clothes, druidic and messy wrappings. Over her forehead was the arrow tattoo that Glimmer had on herself, but her hair was longer, much longer, and her expression much sadder. She looked the youngest of them all, and behind her and the Water Tribe man stood three more, in the gaps between them. Adora moved passed the Earth Kingdom woman and the couple behind her, to the third row where all became clear to her. On the far right was Avatar Mara, similar to how she stood in the clearing, yet with a judgemental look on her stoic and beautiful face this time. Her Fire Nation dress was sculpted to be tattered and destroyed as if burning away off of her.

_‘Because Avatar Mara didn’t help your Prime Fire Lord Hordak wipe out the Air Nomads... She tried to save them from him... She died here...’_

Bow’s words relayed in Adora’s mind as she looked around Mara’s sculpted person, outlining every detail of her body with her eyes, and looking back up to her face. She saw that scorned look, a look of the highest anger. Could what Bow have said be true? Or was this counter to what she’d learned on purpose? Had people sculpted her like this to try and chip away at loyalty to the Fire Nation? To spread misinformation? But then, why wasn’t the story Adora had learned the same everywhere?

_Adora..._

That voice, again. Adora leaned around either side of Avatar Mara’s statue and tried to look into the following maze of other statues. They all looked different and all followed the same pattern. From the front and following backwards it was the same every four statues in terms of how they were dressed and the sigils that were carved into their dresses and trappings – Earth, Water, Air, Fire, all going further and further back. Earth, Water, Air, Fire. They were all Avatars! The Avatar of the Earth Kingdom, the Avatar of the Water Tribes... The Avatar that must have been born after Avatar Mara died... Bow’s story began to hold more and more water the more Adora was seeing of the room. But she couldn’t believe what he had said. No! It wasn’t like that; it was like what had been told Adora when she was a child in her classes. Avatar Mara joined forces with the Prime Fire Lord Hordak and together they destroyed the Air Nomads before they could attack anyone else. Then the world was plunged into a hundred years of war. And it would soon all be worth it to see an era of everlasting peace, with the Fire Nation leading the world forward into a time none could predict. Avatar Mara was a hero of the Fire Nation, not a traitor.

_Adora!_

It was coming from the statue of Mara herself. And her eyes were glowing before Adora as she looked up, in total awe before the homage to her nation’s greatest hero.

“Avatar Mara?” Adora peeped, frozen in place suddenly, wondering if the voice in her head was the past Avatar herself, now calling upon Adora’s own faith in her. Was she trying to commune with her from beyond the grave? “Hello?” Adora asked again, wondering if she should be saying anything at all to a voiceless statue.

She put her hands to the statue and her mind instantly ached with a greater force than she’d ever experienced. Her hands were shaking on the statue and she was even more frozen than before, rigid on the spot and her hands glued to the stone of the piece. The glowing eyes were all the more striking, like beams of light from a heavenly body gazing down into Adora’s eyes and judging her there at the moment. Her head was pulsing and the statue next to her was positively vibrating in her grasp. Adora was scared beyond belief and was praying that the toxin would be flushed from her system so she could finally bend again, but nothing happened. No voice came for a moment, but the crushing weight over her head threatened to make her lose consciousness. Adora looked into the eyes of the Avatar Mara and felt something coming to her again. The staff! The visions! All were suddenly flooding back to her like a tsunami.

_Open your eyes, Adora. Open your mind to the reality of the waking world!_

Everything flashed before Adora more vibrantly than ever before – Fire Nation, Dragons, Hordak, Air Temples, Earth Kingdom, Water Tribes, Monks, Avatar Mara, she was there, with the monks, and Hordak was coming for them and laughing. They flew away on gliders and on boats and by any means possible as the Air Temples were blanketed in flames, engulfed by fire and swallowed whole by an inferno. Adora saw it all in her mind’s eye, and then a baby’s cry...

_Awaken to the reality of your destiny, Adora!_

The Earth Kingdom! The Avatar at the front! With unusual earrings and power beyond imagining, but he was slain, fell upon by a horde of Fire Nation soldiers and engulfed in a fire the same as the Air Temples in the previous vision. Adora’s mind was vexed until she saw stars and pulsing blood around the visions, her teeth threatened to break as she grit them harder. The previous Avatar was dying, and then Adora felt herself shooting across the entire world, further and further away from the Earth Kingdom, to the Fire Nation. And then another baby’s cry rang out, only this one felt familiar. Adora was thrown from the statue across the room and hit the wall near the doorway, slamming into it and knocking her out on impact, her body limply falling to the floor with the chains still intact. She was mumbling in her unconsciousness and her body ached incredibly badly. In her sleeping mind, the words of Avatar Mara continued to ring out.

_Remember who you are, Adora..._

“Wake up! Come on, get up Fire Nation!” Netossa was kicking her and rousing her from her sudden slumber. Adora burst awake and sat up with a violent reaction.

They all held her and Adora looked around her – Netossa, the man, Bow and Glimmer all huddled around her with hands on weapons, and Glimmer standing in a defensive stance for her element. They weren’t taking any chances with her, believing this all a ruse but Adora’s mind was so awake with ideas and revelations that she now had no time for this. She needed to talk to Glimmer, and confer her history with the visions and then hold them up against the history the Fire Nation had told her. The spell from the statue had instantly and violently illuminated her mind as if time was not an abundant thing at all.

“Come on! Get up, Fire Nation!” Netossa ordered her again.

“My name is Adora!” Adora barked back, slowly rising to her feet and feeling warmth in her hands again. The toxin was wearing off, she could feel it. She didn’t want to use her fire yet, didn’t need to. She needed to talk to Glimmer and looked right at her with purposeful fire in her bright blue eyes; she could see it reflected back in Glimmer’s. “I need to talk to you, Glimmer... I really need to talk to you,” she begged the Airbender.

Bow was instantly between them, looking hardy and built like a house. “You don’t get to make demands or requests here, _Adora_. And you’re not getting near her after last night. You wanna talk; you can talk to the council!” He barked back, but Glimmer gripped at his forearm and shoved herself forward.

“No, wait, Bow!” Glimmer yelled, pushing him back. “Something’s changed,” she could tell, seeing it in Adora’s eyes. She looked to Adora next, meeting blue eyes with her own and telling that something inside of them had awoken. “You want to talk, we’ll talk, but those stay on, for now, got it?” She asked, referring to the cuffs around Adora’s wrists. Bow and the rest of the entourage took their leave and moved out the doorway.

He lingered, bringing Glimmer with him and going over ground rules as Adora sat down again with her legs crossed. “I’ll be right outside, okay?” Bow asked, and Glimmer nodded, knowing somehow she would be okay. When he was gone and the door shut again, Glimmer sat opposite to Adora, with her back to the statues and Adora looking over her shoulder right at them. She looked rather flippant, eager to understand what had changed but still unmoving in her resolve to the history that she knew, not Adora. But this time, Adora was ready to listen – her mind had been opened.

* * *

They talked for what felt like hours, tossing back and forth what Glimmer knew of history and what Adora had been told. And suddenly to the blonde it all washed away like a badly maintained painting, scrubbed clean with some of Glimmer’s concessions that she was ready to think about. The visions remained in her mind like sunbeams cast onto a colour, the light and vibrancy draining from them as it lingered until they appeared overwhelmed and began to fade, but Adora remembered all of what she’d been shown. They kept going around and around until Adora finally gave in, and tossed her hands down to the floor in a sigh. She was looking at her uniform suddenly and doubted just how incredible it and the Fire Nation was as a whole. She was ready to listen to the rest of the world and contrast everything against the thinking she’d held for her whole life, the visions were that powerful and that ineffable, but she just wasn’t sure. The Fire Nation was her, her everything, her whole life. Almost all of it – there was still Catra.

Did Catra feel this way too? Did she know all this? Adora hadn’t ever asked her about how she felt about the Fire Nation before. There was The Shadow Weaver, and she knew Catra hated her, and there was Lonnie too, and Adora was pretty sure Catra hated her too. But she knew nothing about Catra’s feelings about their home.

“I was always told we declared war because it was inevitable... That everyone else was plotting war and that Prime Fire Lord Hordak struck first to gain the advantage and take charge... So we’d be able to usher peace faster, and lead the world...” Adora broke the silence, going back to her earliest teachings about her country.

Glimmer shook her head, looking almost sadder than she had the night before.

“No one was plotting, Adora... Prime Fire Lord Hordak struck first because he was the only one planning to strike,” Glimmer contradicted everything Adora had ever heard about the war. “Avatar Mara tried to stand against him as he slaughtered my people... And now the Fire Nation go all over the Earth Kingdom doing the same, destroying villages whole as they go...”

Adora’s eyes flickered up, suddenly angry again. “We don’t kill people!” She barked. “I’ve never killed an Earthbender since coming here! We take the villages, yeah, but I’ve never seen someone killed,” she retorted.

“Open your eyes, Adora!” Glimmer fought back, not backing down. “You’ve seen them! Houses burnt! Whole populations have gone! Their belongings destroyed! Anyone who isn’t killed is sent to prison camps!”

Adora couldn’t handle it. “No! No! No! I would know! I’m a soldier for the Fire Nation! I would know if people were being killed whole villages at a time! I would know if their belongings were being destroyed! I would know if we even had prison camps! They’re refugees!”

“The refugees are the ones who escape the Fire Nation’s advance, Adora! And they’re all flocking to Ba Sing Se right now! The refugees are fleeing _from_ the Fire Nation!”

There came a thunderous and destructive explosion from outside, and the very ground began to shake with a force Adora was very familiar with. Glimmer’s expression dropped and she raced to the doorway – Bow was already there waiting for her, Adora remained on the floor with her past in tatters and the visions still swirling around in her mind as the headaches ensued. She could warm up her palms and wrists to a melting point and be free of the cuffs, she could escape, but the crippling headache vexing her mind was too much. She could barely hear Bow and Glimmer talking by the door and if it were not for them shouting, she wouldn’t hear it at all. The ground continued to rumble and shake with unrelenting force and a few more explosions detonated outside.

“Glimmer! It’s the Fire Nation... They’re here!” Bow was yelling over the sound of firepower unleashed upon the village.

“Get everybody out, Bow; we’ll have to cover the villagers while they escape!” Glimmer told him.

“What about Adora?” He asked, and Adora snapped out of her pained daze, slowly trying to get to her feet, her palms immediately warming as she tensed her arms and regulated her breathing. Everything was beginning to get... warm.

She appeared before Glimmer and Bow in no time with the cuffs off of her wrists, forcing the archer to take his bow out from his sheath, reaching for an arrow. But Adora had her hand up in an almost political stance. There wasn’t going to be a fight between them – she was going outside and was going to tell her friends and fellow soldiers to stand down. They had captured her, and she would allow them to escape now. And prove Glimmer wrong.

“I’ll cover your escape, and show you that we’re not killing villages whole,” she told Glimmer defiantly before striding ahead, rather full of herself.

Outside was a nightmare – tanks had overrun the village, beginning to set fire to the buildings, with foot soldiers flooding into the main square from between the buildings. Ash had begun to flutter down from the air like snow, staining Adora’s hair with grim blackness as infernos began to consume the buildings. Adora couldn’t believe her eyes. They were burning everything; the houses, the market stalls, the carts, everything was beginning to catch fire at the hands of the Fire Nation foot soldiers. Civilians were running in all directions, to a river that lay at the foot of the village, out back up the mountain pass or down and to the far left and into a cave. Any direction they could, all were just trying to escape.

A group of civilians were running from a soldier, but the boy had fallen to the ground and the skull-helmeted trooper was looming over him, hands out to sweep him up and capture the child. His father ran from nowhere, a non-bender, and tackled the trooper to the ground, slamming a rock into his hardy helmet and Adora was frozen to watch it and the rest of the carnage taking place all around her. The trooper was overpowering the father and threw him off of himself. Adora couldn’t watch as a plume of fire heated from the soldier’s fist and engulfed the father alive, his child scream echoing across the square and crippling Adora.

She fell to her knees, helpless and in disbelief at what she was seeing – her conditioning had been broken.

Bow and Glimmer were behind her, she could sense them, and she had clenched her fists as tight as she could without drawing blood from her own nails. Adora was looking to the nearest trooper, burning a house with his own fists, and she focused on him. In an instant, she made up her mind.

Adora charged at him, storming the battlefield and jetting herself forward with a burst of flame from her fists to propel her quicker. She fell upon the trooper and kicked him hard in the head, knocking him out with one kick, and moving onto the next one. Behind her she could hear Bow shouting, his freedom fighters coming to his back and Glimmer screaming too. They weren’t shouting for Adora, they were shouting for themselves.

“Attack!” Bow yelled into the air and they began to all fall upon the Fire Nation troopers.

Adora found another target, keeping her firebending to a minimum but he found her bare face and tossed in with the rest of the opposition. A flurry of bright orange fire blazed across the gap to her but Adora opened her palms and dispersed it herself, bending the fire like it was nothing and following up with a well-condensed blast of flame that pushed the trooper off of his feet. With all her strength, Adora grabbed the soldier by his ankle and threw him as hard as she could against a nearby tank, standing ready to firebend the operator who would come out to attack her next.

The hatch opened just as she anticipated but the face of the driver made Adora’s heart sink, beat like a drum and then explode all in the space of a single second.

“Hey Adora...”

“C-Catra... What are you... What are you doing here, Catra?” Adora found herself asking as her partner leapt from inside the tank to the ground with her. The rest of the battlefield melted away and there was nothing except the two of them. She didn’t even notice Lonnie, Rogelio and Kyle storming Glimmer and Bow, blasting the former’s Airbending with a whole firebending onslaught. She was no match for them.

“I came to rescue you, dummy,” Catra told Adora. “I wrangled Lonnie and the boys to search the nearby Air Temple, but we didn’t find anything. So I managed to persuade Lonnie to get a detachment of troops and some tanks and we went from village to village to find you.” Catra lurched forward and wrapped her arms around Adora rather sharply and unexpectedly for Adora’s liking. Her body was numb to the hug and she almost didn’t want it. Everything she saw in the Fire Nation, everything she knew was shattered like a broken mirror and all that was left was what she was seeing now. In her eyes, Adora could see Glimmer and Bow pushed to the ground as Lonnie apprehended them. Catra broke off and looked at Adora strangely, looking into her eyes. “Hello? Adora? Helloooo, anybody in there? Catra to Adora, please respond...” She was cackling as if the massacre of the village was nothing.

Adora grabbed her hand tightly and looked her in the eye. “Catra... We have to get out of here. The Fire Nation is burning down whole villages across the Earth Kingdom... And it gets worse...”

“Well I don’t know about getting worse, but are you telling me you didn’t know?” Catra instantly shot back, standing stiffly still when Adora tried to pull on her hand and arm. She was still smiling and still shaking from the cackle, and so insanely casual about the burning buildings and dying civilians around them.

More of Adora crackled and shattered away as she looked at Catra.

“What... You mean, you knew? You knew they were lying to us?”

When she looked in Catra’s eyes again, she didn’t know who was looking back at anymore. Not just the visions, nor the talk with Glimmer or the lecture from Bow. Catra looked blank and not like Catra in Adora’s own eyes anymore. She was someone else and someone far more cruel and awake than Adora herself was. Something broke inside of her.

“Of course I knew,” Catra told her plainly, as if it were nothing at all. “You mean you didn’t?” She was cackling again. “Come on, Adora... How could you be _that_ dumb? We all knew what we were doing, what they were doing... What The Shadow Weaver was doing... Like hell, you didn’t...”

A trooper walked over to Lonnie in front of the prisoners as Glimmer and Bow and Netossa all struggled at the hands of their apprehenders. Adora looked from them to Catra and back again, not sure what to think or what to feel anymore. Catra still cackled a little and then reached out and grabbed Adora’s hand. The world seemed to stop and time seemed to slow.

“Captain Lonnie, what should we do with the prisoners, ma’am?” The trooper asked, and Catra tugged on Adora’s hand as if to lead her back into the tank.

“Come on, Adora, we gotta get back to The Shadow Weaver... She wants to see you...”

Adora had to keep focusing on Lonnie and her response. “There are no prisoners, corporal,” she addressed the skull-faced trooper with an evil and scornful look. Glimmer’s eyes popped as if she were about to explode and Adora could swear she saw tears. “Finish them off and then pull the division out. We have what we came for,” Lonnie finished, looking back to Adora.

Catra pulled on her hand again. “Adora!” She shouted to her again, but couldn’t get through. Adora wouldn’t let her.

The troopers held their fists out against Glimmer and the rest of them, and Adora snapped. Something inside of her detonated and she ran forward, leaving Catra and sprinting with all her might. She wouldn’t make it, she couldn’t save Glimmer. They were done.

Adora slammed her feet on the floor and a sudden tidal wave of earth went shooting out ahead of her, striking the troopers like an army of bricks and swatting them away from her once-captors. More came at Adora, prepared to take her down (Lonnie, Rogelio and Kyle were among them all ready to firebend her to hell), but Adora was in some sort of a trance and unable to come down from it. She snapped her wrists back and forth in a fluid motion and from the river and wells around the village, a torrential force of water broke through the remains of houses and swelled into the square, ripping all of the Fire Nation forces off of their feet and washing them away, down the hill and into the river. Tanks surrounded Adora, but she stomped again on the floor and large spikes of earth and rock jittered out of the ground, launching them away from her and those she wanted to protect.

The troopers were away, the executioners were gone and the tanks launched away, but one more fire blast came at Adora’s back, hurdling towards her. Coming out of the trance she spun on the spot and pushed out her opened palm; a wave of air came blasting from her hand and pushed back against the fire, dissipating it away and protecting her.

Opening her eyes, Adora could see the face of her attacker, her own face bewildered and in grimacing awe.

It was Catra. “Catra, I...” Adora spoke, coming out of her trance.

“Adora!” Glimmer, Bow, Netossa and even Catra all shouted in unison.

She didn’t realise what she had just done until she looked all around the battlefield, seeing the spread out water and the wreckage of the tanks and the moved about the earth. She’d done it all, she’d acted upon every element. “You’re the Avatar...” Catra told her, in complete shock. Adora froze.


	5. The Avatar Returns, Part 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the middle of a Fire Nation attack, Adora suddenly learns and reveals that not only does she have the power to Firebend, but also Waterbend, Earthbend and Airbend - she is the Avatar. With the stark realistation that not only is she the next Avatar, but that the Fire Nation is nothing she thought it was, Adora makes a crippling decision, one that could create a rift between her and Catra that may be irreparable...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this ended up being so late, but I'm in a position to continue this fic!

_Air, Water, Earth, Fire. Long ago, the Four Nations lived together in harmony. Then, everything changed when the Fire Nation attacked. Only the Avatar, Master of all four elements, could stop them, but when the world needed her most, she vanished. A hundred years past and my friend and I discovered the new Avatar – a Firebender named Adora, and although her firebending skills are great, she has a lot to learn before she’s ready to save anyone._

_But I believe Adora can save the world..._

“Catra, I,” Adora breathed, her palms still opened out and pointed to her friend, her stance defensive and her body fearful that the Firebender would release another fiery blast she’d have to defend from.

But how had she just dispersed the first one? How had she defended against Catra’s attack? In the heat of the moment, Adora’s head was empty and confused, she couldn’t tell where she was or who she was suddenly and her head was swelling beyond belief. Her mind was vexed to a terrible degree and Adora felt her legs turn to utter jelly underneath her, threatening to give way the longer she stood against Catra, now polar opposite to her friend.

Then the replaying seconds returned to her and Adora’s eyes popped. Had she performed Airbending?

“Adora...” Catra spoke softly as the others shouted it behind Adora. “You’re the Avatar...” Catra followed; her eyes unable to believe what she’d seen from her friend.

The blonde was looking at her open palm and realised that not only had she just slipped into Airbending, but Earthbending and Waterbending too. She’d done it all in the span of a few seconds. In less than a minute all of Adora’s life had truly come crashing down before her and now suddenly she realised that she was the Avatar... There was nothing else to explain the magic that she had just performed and in front of everyone. In front of Catra. She reached out for her friend, laying down her arms and tears coming to her eyes as she looked across the small space between them. “Catra, I...”

Before Adora could finish, a hurling rocket of intense flame came in her direction, only stopping and dispersing when Adora clicked in the nick of time and clenched her fists, Firebending coming to her fingers and making the flame her own. She took the heat into her body and moved the fireball away from her face and to the floor in the nick of time. It had not come from Catra; in fact, the woman was looking off to the side when Adora could see through the smoke that followed.

Her attacker was Lonnie.

“Lonnie...” Adora tried to reason, her palms coming up again. She couldn’t do anything but Firebend now, she could sense it within herself. Whatever magic had coursed through her and allowed her to bend the other elements had come and gone and now she was just a Firebender again.

“Attack the traitor!” Lonnie was shouting again and all of the Firebenders sprang to their feet and to action, all looking and focusing on Adora.

Glimmer had had enough. A burst of air jetted from her palms and shot her into the air and down to the ground. She fell on her ankles, destroying the chains and blasting the links of the one connecting her wrists with another huge gust from her mouth and lungs. Suddenly she was free again and coming to Bow immediately. She grabbed his bow for him and used it to crush and destroy the chains of his cuffs, setting him free and telling him to do the rest of the work in setting their fighters free.

“Where are you going?!” He yelled back at her as fire and blasts began to ring out beyond them in the square.

“To help Adora,” she told him matter-of-factly as he got to work getting his legs free and then everyone else.

Lonnie launched blast after blast at Adora, but the blonde was spinning around like in a perpetual dance with her, taking her fire blasts into her own hands and returning them to sender. As she did, she created windows to dodge and redirect the other blasts from the soldiers coming at her. She couldn’t Airbend or Waterbend anymore, but she could still Firebend better than anyone in the square, and Lonnie knew it as she hurled more and more off at Adora. Every time, Adora would either dodge them entirely or redirect them like she was dancing. The display made her rival seethe all the more.

“Captain!” Rogelio called through the skull of their helmet, bringing Lonnie’s attention to the freedom fighters coming free and at them again. Before Lonnie could react, a large gust of wind hit her square in the gut and knocked her three feet backwards and on her back, as Glimmer arrived on the scene, tucking away the glider than she’d taken from Adora and smiling.

“Hi, I’m Glimmer...” She trash-talked with a curt smile and arrogant magenta eyes as she took another fighting stance.

Lonnie wiped the streak of blood than had appeared past her lip and almost snarled. “Airbender scum!” She bellowed, shooting herself onto her feet again in a front flip aided by jets of fire from her hands. As she flipped back into a pivot, Lonnie snapped more fire from her palm and fist, creating a wild and powerful whip of flame, snaking it across the air toward Glimmer. The Airbender shot a cone of wind at it from a stationary stance and batted back the snake of fire like it was nothing. Lonnie followed with a pulsing blast of fire from her free hand, but Glimmer dodged it like she was a leaf on the wind. Lonnie had never seen anything like it before in her life. She couldn’t believe the ability of the Airbender before her. Two more blasts followed and Glimmer displayed the same discipline, and Lonnie could swear the woman’s eyes were shut as she dodged them like a leaf between projectiles. It was something unnatural.

When Glimmer was on both feet again in a wide stance she put Lonnie in her crosshairs and fired another blast of air against her chest, throwing Lonnie more than three feet this time, aiming to splat her against a house. And Lonnie went clean through the wall, a puff of smoke in her trail. Glimmer smiled and hummed to herself, but heard a roar of anger from the gap in the wall. Lonnie was not giving up.

Before Glimmer could go back and help Adora with the rest of the Firebenders, Lonnie was in the air flying at her with burning fists and more blasts shooting from them than Glimmer could dodge. And suddenly there were in a fight of blast for blast – air dispersing fire.

Adora took another ball of flame into her hand and spun it into the shape of an uncontrollable disk, throwing it at the soldier who’d sent it her way and catching him in the armoured chest, as well as the two next to him, knocking more of her adversaries down. Two flanked her on either side, shooting large cones of flame at her to completely engulf her but she shot herself high into the air with a burst of fire from her heel, landing behind one and kicking him in the back of his calf, breaking his leg. The grunt told her it was Kyle as he fell to the floor and she felt remotely bad. Adora felt even worse as she picked him up and threw him across the gap at who must have been Rogelio and knocked them both out onto the floor.

“Sorry, Kyle!” Adora shouted back, feeling bad indeed for breaking his leg.

She heard a meek whine from the pile of boyfriends with a scrawny hand rising out of the mess of limbs. “It’s okay, Adora!” He called back, forever naive and yet honestly innocent. She felt bad.

Another stream of fire was behind her – she could tell the heat and ducked, spinning on one leg and taking her attacker to the floor before she could do anything else. Her ambusher was on their back and Adora sprang back up ready to finish them off with a well-placed punch to the face but when she looked down at the foe, she froze.

“Catra.”

“What you doing, Adora?!” Catra suddenly barked at her, her eyes trembling in their sockets as she looked up at Adora’s changed face. Just as the blonde sensed a difference in her friend, Catra felt Adora was a totally different person. “You’re the Avatar! Imagine what we could do with that! Imagine what _you_ could do for the Fire Nation! For me...”

“It’s not like they told us Catra!” Adora tried to shout into her, standing still on the offensive but not releasing anything from her boiling fists. Catra would listen, Catra would understand. “It’s all a lie! We started this war! We’re the only ones who wanted to fight one! It’s been the Fire Nation for the past one-hundred years, Catra, don’t you see?!”

“Of course I saw it, Adora!” Catra shrieked back quicker than Adora could have ever expected. The reply wounded her as Catra got to her feet again and she let her. “Look around, Adora! Do you think any of this was mutual? Do you think anything we’ve ever done for the Fire Nation has been about spreading our sense of peace around the world?! Open your eyes! This war is about one thing and one thing only – Power. It’s about making everywhere the Fire Nation!”

Adora couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Catra knew... she had known from the beginning.

“What, did you think The Shadow Weaver was hurting me for the fun of it? Did you think she was hurting me to make me a more peaceful person?”

“Catra, I... I never...”

“Never what? Never noticed anything of what was going on around you? Never thought _you_ could be the Avatar? Or never thought that the Fire Nation was hurting me all along the same way we hurt the Earth Kingdom?”

But she was right, Catra had never been more right than she had in the last minute – Adora hadn’t ever noticed anything out of place, hadn’t ever noticed just what was happening to Catra, and never noticed she could have been the Avatar. But more importantly, she had never noticed that they were hurting Catra. She relaxed as Catra had done, and flinched forward, gently putting her hand on Catra’s, reaching to hold her hand like they had done so many times in the past. She wanted to hold her friend, to bring her in close for a hug like those they shared in the night.

“Adora!” It was Glimmer, and they’d dispatched most of the Fire Nation Forces. She had shot a blast of air into Lonnie again and propelled her all the way down the hill of the village and into the river, securing time for an escape but if there was to be one it would have to be now.

Catra gripped her partner’s hand tightly, and Adora did the same instinctively. “Come on,” she told Catra. “Let’s go, now...”

She ran past Catra holding her hand and pulling it, but Catra was going nowhere at all. She remained rooted to her spot and was looking at Adora like she was a stranger. Something had changed something deeply and in both of them and now Catra was looking into Adora’s eyes with her own filled with something Adora had never seen looking back at her before – pure hate. “So that’s it, huh... You’re gonna turn your back on the Fire Nation... On me?”

“Catra... We can go together...”

She was looking at their hands, still holding each other strongly but not for much longer – not ever again. Tears were streaking from Catra’s eyes and her eyebrows flinched into a furious expression. She took her hand back and Adora’s legs became as rooted as Catra’s. Her body was shaking violently and Adora couldn’t feel her legs anymore.

“No, Adora... We can’t.”

Catra reeled her arm back and before Adora could even move a muscle blasted her friend in the upper torso with the most powerful fire blast she’d ever cast from her fist in her entire life. Adora fell backwards and off of her feet like a loose bag of rocks falling down a cliff. Her body was like a rag doll in Glimmer’s eyes as she witnessed the whole scene. She shot herself across the battlefield before Catra could even focus on her and sent a massive gust of air from the palm of her hands, pummelling Catra in the front and sending her back against the wreckage of her own tank, knocking her out. “Bow!” Glimmer was yelling, getting the rest of the fighters over to Adora as Glimmer raced there too. There was no time for anything else.

They all befell Adora’s body and Glimmer began to sob silently as Bow pressed his fingers to her neck. “She’s alive!” He spoke miraculously and Glimmer breathed, heaving all of her worries out and her fingers trembling.

“Come on, we have to get her out of here,” Netossa told the rest of them, hoisting the limp Avatar over her shoulders and heaving her up. Bow ripped the breastplate off of her back and let the front fall from her, shedding much of her weight and making it easier for Netossa to carry her. “Where are we going, Bow?” The warrior woman asked as she hoisted the injured up fully and stood up as best she could.

“Into the woods! Now!” Bow ordered all of them, and they were running before anything else could happen.

By the time Lonnie got herself back to the square, the rebels and Adora were all gone. Kyle was against a ruined wall of a building as Rogelio tended to his left calf, which had been broken from a very harsh kick. Kyle was built like a twig, so it mustn’t have been too hard to break the limb. The fires of the houses were rising tall into the air and the village was burning well, to a crisp as the rest of the troopers climbed back up the hill or got up from a thorough defeat. They were already getting to work on burning the rest of the buildings, including the large house at the head of the square facing the river – it looked big and grand enough to be the central building, and thus took more of the troops to bring it down. Lonnie knew exactly what and who she was looking for as she scanned the aftermath of the scene, knowledge instilled in her mind and a plan rapidly forming to salvage the half-victory and full defeat. She didn’t care for the Airbender; she’d find her soon enough. There was a more pressing matter.

“Get on your feet, Kyle and suck it up. Rogelio, with me,” Lonnie ordered them as she pressed on purposefully as if she was much more than a Force Captain.

“But my leg, Lonnie... It’s broken!” Kyle refused, even as Rogelio hastily finished the makeshift splint and got to their feet before Lonnie with unquestioning loyalty.

Lonnie flinched, and fell on Kyle, pulling him up by the shoulders of his armour and pinning him to the wall. “I couldn’t care less about your leg, Kyle. You better stay on your feet before I have to report your weakness to The Shadow Weaver, and then we’ll see what parts of you are really broken by the end, won’t we?” She asked with the most intense ire and malicious heat in her fist. She let him go without anything else and dusted herself as he struggled to remain standing. Rogelio couldn’t do anything to stop her but remained at her back.

She knew exactly where she was going as the two underlings got behind her. Lonnie found Catra stirring at the wreckage of the tank, coming to her senses and faculties slowly. She’d been hit too and the sight of her did bring a smile to the new Captain’s face. “They’ve escaped, you’ll be delighted to know,” Lonnie reported, bringing a pair of irons from her own belt and dangling them before Catra.

“What the hell are you talking about Lonnie?” Catra asked, still a little stunned. “We have to go after them,” she settled when she was back on her feet and thinking clearly. “I shot Adora square in the chest; she’s injured which means they can’t be getting away too fast. Let’s get after them.”

Lonnie was grinning rather suspiciously, and nodded to the side, bringing two skull-faced soldiers to Catra’s back. Her plan was revealed. “We’ll take care of Adora,” she told Catra as she reached forward with the irons. “But you let her escape, Catra... You’re going right back to The Shadow Weaver, as a traitor to the Fire Nation...”


End file.
